Android and the Malware problem: Google removed 700,000 malicious apps from the play store in 2017

2017, Google eliminated a total of 700,000 malicious applications published within its Play Store that had passed the security controls and had endangered the users of this operating system. These 700,000 applications account for 70% more applications eliminated in the 2016

Although it is not known for sure, Google believes that virtually all this malware has a total of 100,000 developers, who constantly create new game accounts to help publish their applications within the Play Store, fooling the security controls of Play Storeughout 2016.

The malicious apps they are created and distributed for android, this is a clearly example of a bad information security policy of android, these malicious apps are of all types from duplicated and modified apps They seek to pass themselves off as a reliable app using keywords (such as fake Instagram clients), even applications with inappropriate content that have crept into the store, be it adult content, dangerous links or even apps that are just advertising and announcements.

Although Google ensures that both its protection engine based on Artificial Intelligence, known as Google Play Protect, and human controls are constantly monitoring the publications of the store, clearly this is not the case of good information securitypolicies of google. The international institute of cyber security has written a blog talking about this problem from Google.

The 700.000 malicious apps removed from the play store are less than the 1 % of the malware created for Android in 2017

700,000 malicious applications published within the Play Store may seem like many applications, however, are they really many? According to the Google report, these 700,000 applications represent only 1% of malicious applications that have detected and blocked in time before they ended up published in the Play Store and distributed among users.

Another company of the Information security, Webimprints, also give an opinion of this case, “for a big company like Google, protection is necessary for them and for the information of their users”, commented the company on its official website.